AskHistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
How did the clothing brand Hugo Boss manage to shake off the fact that they produced Nazi uniforms for Hitler Youth and Waffen-SS and still remain a relevant brand to this day?	4976
What is currently the most accepted theory among scholars regarding the origins of the Etruscans? An ancient civilization in central Italy which spoke a non-Indo-European language.	2309
Was Homer's Odysseus a representation of a distant memory of the sea peoples?	2231
In "A short history of the crusades" Brownworth writes that the Muslims of the Middle East/ North Africa did not consider the crusades an event of great significance but merely as historical footnotes, since few Muslim scholars wrote about the crusades. How accurate is this interpretation?	615
Why is it common to hear older people from former Soviet states proclaim that "things were better during the USSR"? In what ways, and for whom, were things objectively "better" under the USSR?	302
Why did Hannibal, a notoriously brilliant strategic mind, bother bringing elephants on a dreadful march across the Alps? How effective were they in combat?	247
Is Machiavelli's 'The Prince' political satire, or a resume of his competence, or intended as a handbook for whichever authority he was writing to? Could Machiavelli possibly expect that his work would become a staple in political philosophy?	163
We generally consider names such as "Tyrone", "Deonte" or "LaToya" as distinctly African-American. When and why did such names become prevalent among the African-American ethnic group?	141
The Sumerian language was unique, unrelated to any known language family, and differing completely from the later Semitic languages of Mesopotamia. Do we know anything about its geographical origins? Any consensus on linguistic affinities to other languages? Anything new on this subject?	105
Is there any consensus among historians as to how Romanian, a Romance language, managed to not only survive, but become the lingua franca in Romania, a country in eastern Europe where all other major languages belong to the Balto-Slavic, and Finno-Ugric language families?	86

« < > »